Avalanche general manager Chris MacFarland declined to comment Tuesday on whether forward Valeri Nichushkin will be with the team by the start of the 2023-24 season, but he did offer optimism Nichushkin still has a future with the Avs.
“He was a very important part of our team in the past,” MacFarland said, “and that’s our hope, that he’s going to be a very important part of our team in the future, for sure.”
Nichushkin missed the last five games of Colorado’s season after he was involved in an incident at the team hotel in Seattle on April 23, the day of Game 3 of the Avalanche’s first-round playoff series vs. the Kraken. A woman was found so intoxicated in Nichushkin’s hotel room that a team doctor called for an ambulance to take her to a hospital, according to the police report obtained by The Post. Nichushkin left Seattle that night and has not been with the team since. There is no criminal investigation of Nichushkin stemming from the incident, Seattle PD has said.
The team has declined to comment on the incident or whether it was connected to Nichushkin’s departure.
Avalanche coach Jared Bednar has maintained that Nichushkin’s absence is due to “personal reasons” and not disciplinary, even after the police report was made public. The team has been in contact with Nichushkin but has not disclosed his whereabouts.
Nichushkin is one season into an eight-year contract that runs through 2029-30, with an average annual value of $6.125 million. He scored 17 goals and 47 points in 53 games last season, missing stretches due to an off-and-on ankle injury.
MacFarland, asked if Nichushkin’s situation has caused any frustration regarding the salary cap implications and roster murkiness, replied that “there’s no murkiness.”
“I think we know what we have in terms of our cap,” he said. “We think we have a pretty good feel on the areas we want to tighten up and and improve to get the roster where we feel is in a good place as we enter training camp next year. So we’re excited.”
Offseason injuries for Avalanche players
As is often the case, the Stanley Cup Playoffs took a toll on Avalanche players, including some who were attempting to play through injuries.
Top-six forward Artturi Lehkonen broke a toe during the playoffs but toughed it out for the remainder of the Seattle series, MacFarland said. Lehkonen isn’t joining Mikko Rantanen on the Finnish national team at the IIHF World Championship this summer.
Defenseman Josh Manson and backup goalie Pavel Francouz have both undergone offseason procedures since the Avs’ season ended, but both are expected to be healthy “in the near future” in time for 2023-24 training camp, MacFarland said. Both players were dealing with injuries throughout the 2022-23 season. Manson’s is a continuation of the lower-body injury that caused him to miss the end of the Seattle series, and Francouz’s procedure was for his abductor.
Forward Andrew Cogliano, who fractured his C5 Lamina in Game 6, is not expected to need any sort of surgery, MacFarland said. The Avalanche GM estimated a recovery timeline of six to eight weeks for Cogliano, who is set to become an unrestricted free agent this offseason after signing a one-year deal for 2022-23 with the Avs.
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